6 min read · 12 sources

Canada’s six largest banks just agreed on something: a shared Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit system. BMO, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD jointly announced they’re exploring how to move tokenized deposits efficiently between institutions - the first phase of a project that only makes sense because the country’s regulator already settled the legal question. OSFI has clarified that tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits,” which means the banks aren’t building around a regulatory gray zone. They’re building a rail.

The project follows March’s Project Samara pilot, which tested blockchain-based government bond issuance. If this lands, it’s not a crypto product - it’s a settlement layer for the Canadian banking system, and the six banks that run most of the country’s retail deposits are the ones designing it.

Canada’s OSFI has ruled that tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits.”

CFTC Says "Mention Markets" Are a Manipulation Target

Source: theblock.co ↗

The CFTC’s Division of Market Oversight issued an advisory warning that prediction contracts betting on whether someone will “mention” specific words or attend an event carry heightened manipulation risk, and can only be listed in limited circumstances under the Commodity Exchange Act. The advisory isn’t abstract: the agency has already charged a former White House teleprompter operator and ex-Rep. George Santos over trades tied to advance knowledge of “mention markets” on Kalshi.

The instruction to exchanges is to assess whether the person controlling a contract’s outcome faces independent obligations that deter manipulation. In practice, that means a contract on what a politician says at a rally is only listable if that politician has a legal duty not to game the outcome - which is a much higher bar than “someone will say the word ’tariff’ today.”

Rain Kills the Pre-Funded Card Balance

Source: rain.xyz ↗

Rain introduced real-time funding for stablecoin cards, and it removes the single most annoying part of spending stablecoins: keeping a separate collateral balance topped up. Instead of pre-funding a collateral contract, users connect a wallet and approve a spending limit once. Each purchase authorizes only the exact amount needed against the wallet balance, committing it to the collateral contract until settlement, with the rest staying in the wallet. The approval is revocable at any time.

For engineers, the interesting part is the authorization flow: no more monitoring and replenishing a separate balance, no more failed transactions because the collateral pool ran dry. The feature is in beta for card programs where Rain manages authorization, launching with USDC on Base and Arbitrum and USDT0 on Plasma.

Circle Routes Bitcoin-Backed USDC Through Morpho, and It's Growing Fast

Source: thedefiant.io ↗

Circle has opened Bitcoin-backed USDC borrowing to Mint clients, routed through the Morpho protocol on the Arc platform. The cirBTC market holds $14.3 million in USDC borrowed against 287 cirBTC, up from $1.37 million on Sept. 17 - a 10x jump in five days. Galaxy and Keyrock are supplying nearly all the dollars.

The structure splits responsibilities cleanly: Circle issues the wrapper and wallet, Morpho governs loan terms. Institutional Bitcoin holders get USDC liquidity without liquidating their BTC. The growth rate suggests there was pent-up demand for exactly this.

CME Adds Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap Futures

Source: theblock.co ↗

CME Group plans to list futures on Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap on October 19, pending regulatory approval, with standard and Micro contract sizes of 250/25 BCH and 10,000/1,000 UNI. The addition brings CME’s single-asset crypto derivatives roster to 11 tokens, with Uniswap marking the first DEX governance token the exchange has listed.

The numbers behind the push: CME averaged 279,800 contracts per day in H1 2026, about $8.3 billion in daily notional, while altcoin-specific contracts generated more than $1 billion in notional for the year. The listings follow CME’s June launch of a 24/7 crypto futures and options market. Institutional participants want regulated venues for altcoin price risk, and CME is expanding the menu.

Post-Poseidon: Ethereum's Hash Function Field Just Got Wider

Source: ethresear.ch ↗

The emergence of Flock as a practical post-quantum proof system for binary circuits removes Ethereum’s requirement for circuit-friendly hashes like Poseidon. That opens five protocol layers - consensus signatures, CL aggregation, state tree construction, EL signatures, and EL aggregation - to standard hash function candidates, per the research thread.

The performance targets set the bar: proving 2^25 bytes per second with LeanVM and approximately 1 million hash calls per second. BLAKE3 leads on raw speed at 7 GB/s parallel and 1.1 cycles per byte on long messages, but carries no indifferentiability proofs and a thin cryptanalytic record. SHA-3 holds 50+ published cryptanalytic papers and sponge-mode indifferentiability proofs, but runs at only 0.2 GB/s natively. The research ranks SHA-3 and BLAKE2s as the lowest-risk selections, with SHA-2’s length-extension property disqualifying it as a random-oracle substitute despite 45+ cryptanalytic papers.

All candidates work iteratively, padding input into chunks and compressing chunk by chunk, so performance depends on the number of chunks, not bytes. The choice affects both native and circuit computation efficiency across Ethereum’s protocol.

Tether Walks Away From MiCA, and the ECB Agrees With It

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Tether abandoned MiCA compliance in the EU over a rule that required 60% of reserves in commercial bank deposits. CEO Paolo Ardoino argued it would expose 400 million users to risk since EU deposit insurance caps out at €100,000 per account. Tether holds roughly 80% of its $183 billion in reserves in US Treasuries, and USDT was delisted from all EU exchanges on July 1.

Ardoino said Tether would reconsider “when MiCA becomes safer.” Notably, the ECB and all 27 EU central banks have separately called to scrap the 60% bank-deposit rule. The regulator and the regulated agree the rule is bad - but the rule is still in force.

Kalshi Fires Back on Wash Trading Claims

Source: news.kalshi.com ↗

Kalshi published a detailed rebuttal to wash trading allegations on its perpetuals platform, arguing that its flat-fee liquidity incentive programs mirror standard structures at CME, CBOE, and Nasdaq. The core defense turns on trade economics: analyzed trades showed aggressors captured roughly $98,000 in profit potential, a signal of genuine price discovery rather than coordinated self-dealing.

Kalshi also cited 350,000+ lifetime perpetual traders, open interest doubling over the past 30 days, and a July 2026 fee holiday structure for Self-Clearing Members that caps rebates at exact fees paid per trade. The company states self-trading is mechanically blocked and partner trading is surveilled and banned. Market maker incentives are flat fees for resting liquidity, not volume-based.

Quick Hits

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

BitMEX ended exchange operations as of 04:00 UTC on September 23.

Binance will migrate crypto assets from Funding Accounts to Spot Accounts in phases starting September 29 through January, after which Funding Accounts become “Stocks Accounts” dedicated solely to equities and stock options clearing.

Strategy acquired 950 BTC for $75.7M at an average of $79,670/coin between September 14-20, bringing total holdings to 846,000 BTC - a position exceeding 4% of bitcoin’s 21M hard cap.

Cardano has been added to Coinbase’s x402 SDK, making it the first non-EVM chain on the protocol and enabling apps and AI agents to settle API calls with ADA or Cardano Native Tokens over standard HTTP requests.